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Microsoft is officially sending employees back to the office

businessinsider.com

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Re: Microsoft is officially sending employees back to the office

#781

Post by e40 »

Hackbraten wrote: post #775
dragonwriter wrote: post #513

Earlier quoted context omitted.

RTO mandates are about many things, but actual business value of being in the office to the business doing the mandate is low on the list. Among the things it is about: (1) Executives with emotional attachment to certain leadership styles that are enabled by physical presence, (2) Interest in the investor class for the commercial real estate market. The business impacted may not be invested in it, but the businesses’…

> (2) Interest in the investor class for the commercial real estate market. The business impacted may not be invested in it, but the businesses’ shareholders in sufficient numbers probably are How is this not a net loss for them? From their perspective, wouldn’t that just be moving money left to right, plus even more overhead?

Commercial real estate crashing would have a huge impact on the economy. Many of these companies are invested heavily in it, too.

Re: Microsoft is officially sending employees back to the office

#782

Post by Aeolun »

throwaw12 wrote: post #727
simoncion wrote: post #675

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> ...when you're in the office there is a chance you will deliver your stellar results and additionally contribute more, because you literally can't watch TV and take a nap. I see you've never seen many Silicon Valley software companies. Couches and comfortable chairs are a not-infrequent sight in the trendy open-plan offices, as are folks sleeping, reading, or otherwise slacking off atop them.

it's not about missing amenities, it's about pressure from your peers and additional eyes in the office to make you work. At home you can literally spend whole day in front of TV and work a little, in the office you can as well watch TV, but not consistently, every day for full day.

I find the opposite to be true. If I’m at home I better push a commit, because otherwise people will think I’m slacking off. If I’m in the office and visibly in front of my computer however, I can be doing anything at all and I’d still be considered productive.

Re: Microsoft is officially sending employees back to the office

#783

Post by avereveard »

freddie_mercury wrote: post #573
dragonwriter wrote: post #572

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was very clear, I thought, when I said “RTO mandates are about...”, that I was not saying “All of these factors are relevant to Microsoft”. With Microsoft its probably mostly (3), with maybe some degree of (2), with (1) maybe, especially in the political salience, being a plus in the eyes of some decision-makers but not really driving the decision. There are firms (and public agencies) where the relationship betwee…

No CEO cares about commercial real estate profits. It isn't a factor in any major company decision. Why not extend the baseless paranoia and say it is because they want to see auto company profits go up? And also support petroleum companies? Or is it just real estate that is boogeyman secretly running the country behind the scenes?

Cfo and shareholder do care about value of their building as these are on the balance sheet as asset and large swings can impact the metrics by which the market evaluates the companies.

Re: Microsoft is officially sending employees back to the office

#784

Post by aurareturn »

cmiles74 wrote: post #753
aurareturn wrote: post #697

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because they don't want the public/employees to misconstrue those metrics? Maybe they don't want employees to know how they view productivity? Surely if they're presented with solid evidence that WFH increases productivity, they'd keep it. Execs make millions in bonuses if the performance of the company hits certain goals. It's baffling that people here still talk about real estate conspiracy theories.

If there were clear metrics showing that in-person teams “out perform” remote teams, we would be hearing about it constantly. The supposed rationale for keeping such data secret sounds far-fetched to me.

The rationale is that there is no upside and pure downside for releasing these metrics to the public. It opens them up to scrutiny.

The evidence is that there have been more RTO calls than companies switching to pure WFH post-Covid.

Re: Microsoft is officially sending employees back to the office

#786

Post by sabellito »

Anon1096 wrote: post #238
tokai wrote: post #66

Commute time should be salaried time. Then the whole office/home work discussion could be taken with the true costs involved.

As a salaried employee there is no "salaried time." You're paid for your output not the time spent on it. This goes especially true for Microsoft where lots of people put in far less than a 40hr workweek. Literally no one bats an eye at arriving at the office late so if you want to start your commute at 9 and include that in your "working hours" no one would care.

I disagree completely with that, at least for software engineers.

The work queue is infinite, measuring output with any sort of precision is almost impossible for a lot of the work (maintenance, actually necessary refactors, security, mentoring juniors, managing stakeholders, etc etc etc). There's no "I've finished my work for today".

I'm not saying that I like it, or that it's a good thing, but in my understanding engineers are paid to be available doing work roughly 40h/week.

Re: Microsoft is officially sending employees back to the office

#787

Post by dml2135 »

wpm wrote: post #491
chii wrote: post #480

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> unspecific vibes that it must be bad if employees like it I read it as the feeling that they know somehow that the employees are not putting in 100% of their attention at home on the work assigned. And i do believe it to be true - lots of people claim that WFH means they can "do the laundry" and/or go to the post office. The fact is that there's very few self-starters and intrinsically motivated employees. Most are…

> Not to mention the fact that it is indeed much harder to have collaborative discussions that are spontaneous and unplanned in a WFH setting, compared to the office. This is a culture thing that is easily fixed by mandating cameras on, buying everyone good microphones, and a consensus that you can ping someone with a question, go back and forth, and know that you aren't imposing by throwing a /zoom into the Slack DM…

Wow I’m surprised at the heavy downvoted here.

I don’t think mandating cameras on and insisting on 100% is the right move, but I definitely think you want to aim for a team culture where camera-on is a default and most people have them on 80-90% of the time.

Otherwise, yea participation and engagement seems to take a major hit.

Re: Microsoft is officially sending employees back to the office

#789

Post by InsideOutSanta »

_heimdall wrote: post #759
dragonwriter wrote: post #513

Earlier quoted context omitted.

RTO mandates are about many things, but actual business value of being in the office to the business doing the mandate is low on the list. Among the things it is about: (1) Executives with emotional attachment to certain leadership styles that are enabled by physical presence, (2) Interest in the investor class for the commercial real estate market. The business impacted may not be invested in it, but the businesses’…

I always assume a different option, though (3) is likely part of it for Microsoft right now as well. When leadership decides their velocity is too slow for whatever reason, they look for deck chairs to move. RTO is one big deck chair they can move and many will assume it will improve performance and velocity. The problem is that I've never seen anyone actually prove that out for RTO with solid data. And that goes bot…

I'm pretty sure it doesn't have a significant impact on performance for the kind of work people on HN do. I do my work every day. When I'm done doing my work at the office, I browse HN. After I finish my work at home, I do the dishes. But I do roughly the same amount of work either way.

Re: Microsoft is officially sending employees back to the office

#790

Post by sabellito »

aurareturn wrote: post #640
QuiEgo wrote: post #519

Personal observations: - There are times when in-person collaboration is invaluable. - There are times when having quiet focus time alone is invaluable. - Every team and job is different. Sitting on Zoom all day in an open office full of strangers doesn't make sense. Getting blocked because I bricked my proto board and I need a tech to rework it but I'm wfh and the tech is wfh and now we have to do a mail dance and b…

Hybrid is the worst of both worlds. Go into the office just to sit in a Zoom call.

Hybrid is ok if the WFH days are set for everyone, otherwise I agree it's a waste of time, since people are randomly in the office.
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